In this RedMonk Conversation, Kedasha Kerr, Developer Advocate and Technical Content Creator at GitHub, and Andrea Griffiths, Senior Developer Advocate at GitHub, chat about the importance of educational content for developers, language accessibility, community engagement, the value of open source, and the role of AI in learning, with Rachel Stephens, Research Director at RedMonk. They discuss the need for foundational skills in programming and the importance of finding supportive communities for self-taught learners.

This RedMonk conversation is sponsored by GitHub.

Links

• LinkedIn: Kedasha Kerr
• LinkedIn: Andrea Griffiths
• GitHub: AndreaGriffiths11
• GitHub: LadyKerr
• githubbrasil.com
• Open Source Fridays
• Git for Beginners

Transcript

Rachel Stephens (00:14)
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the MonkCast. I am Rachel Stephens. I am the research director at RedMonk. And at RedMonk, we focus a lot about developers and practitioners and the things that they care about. And that makes me very excited to welcome my guests to the podcast today, which are part of the developer advocacy team at GitHub. So with me today, I have Kadasha Kerr, who is a developer advocate, and Andrea Griffiths, who is a senior developer advocate. Ladies, would you care to introduce yourselves?

Kedasha Kerr (00:43)
Yeah, hi everyone. I’m Kedasha and I’m a developer educator and technical content creator at GitHub. I’m currently focused on educating developers about AI and GitHub Copilot. So this means I do workshops, I build projects, I do talks, and I’m currently leading a series called GitHub for Beginners where I teach you about getting started with Git and GitHub and GitHub Copilot.

Rachel Stephens (01:04)
wonderful and Andrea.

Andrea Griffiths (01:06)
Thank you, Rachel. Hello, Monkcast folks. I’m Andrea Griffiths. I’m a Senior Developer Advocate at GitHub. I get to work on championing developer success, supporting open source, and a ton of community-driven innovation. I also have the pleasure of working with communities that are based out of Latin America, Africa. So you’ll see me talking to folks in different languages, creating content to help you better use the platform, and always, always promoting open source.

Rachel Stephens (01:35)
I love this. And one of the reasons I am so delighted to have you all on today is because you are currently making content that I, as a newbie in this industry, would have absolutely loved to have had when I started. So I self-taught a programming language using Coursera.

The way I learned Git was just mostly through trial and error and like going to like the “Oh Shit, Git!?!” documentation and trying to figure out how to fix what I did wrong rather than proactively doing it right. It was just like, I was like, I had a lot of trial and error learning rather than some of the wonderful resources that you have put together to help people proactively figure out concepts and getting things right. So Kadesha, you mentioned the series that you have been working on.

Andrea Griffiths (02:04)
All those days.

Kedasha Kerr (02:06)
Yes.

Rachel Stephens (02:21)
in and around teaching Git for Beginners. So can we dive in there and just talk about what kind of inspired this series? What have you taught people both about Git and GitHub? And just what have you done together to put together the educational path on this one?

Kedasha Kerr (02:35)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I’m creating the series for past Kedasha So I’m also self-taught and I remember when I was learning about version control and GitHub, I literally cried every day because I just found it so hard and I found the concept so difficult to like grasp because it was my first time seeing it, right? So when I started working at GitHub five years later after being in the industry, right? I realized that new developers were still struggling with

Rachel Stephens (02:41)
Love it.

Andrea Griffiths (02:41)
I love it.

Kedasha Kerr (03:04)
Git and GitHub and we at GitHub, yeah.

Rachel Stephens (03:06)
Can I ask you a quick question? Sorry, I totally going to interrupt. When you were self-taught, did you have a harder time learning version control than you did the programming language? Because for me, I totally had a harder time with the version control concept. Okay.

Kedasha Kerr (03:16)
Yes, yes. I had a harder time with version control because I’m like, git stash, git-init, git. I remember it was so hard to remember the git flow, git-status, git-add, git-commit, git-push. my gosh, I pushed the wrong branch. my gosh, I’m working on the main branch. What do I do? It’s like it was always so difficult. And like when I started working at GitHub, saw new developers were having the same issue.

Rachel Stephens (03:24)
It’s like…

Andrea Griffiths (03:26)
you

Kedasha Kerr (03:43)
And so I was like, you know what, I’m going to make a pitch. so I made a pitch to do a video training that has like corresponding blog posts for folks who likes to read. It’s very visual, very user friendly, very easy. And it was approved. so GitHub for Beginners essentially teaches you how to use Git and GitHub. That is the core goal of GitHub for Beginners. So from installing Git to creating your first commit to creating your first repository, the series essentially guides you through everything that you need to know.

to be successful when using GitHub. So a lot of times this concept is not taught in schools and when students get to work, they have to know how to use version control and Git and GitHub and the like, right? And so having a resource like this that’s officially stamped by GitHub is amazing thing. And I’m actually working on the current season, which is focused on GitHub

Andrea Griffiths (04:16)
Yeah.

Kedasha Kerr (04:36)
Copilot specifically. So from installing GitHub Copilot to building applications with GitHub Copilot, Season 2 will guide new developers through the entire process of using the coding assistant.

Rachel Stephens (04:48)
I love this. it feels like you, so I haven’t gone through all the blog posts, but I watched all the videos and I loved how anchored everything was in practical skills and teaching people how to do things. I thought it was really well done. And so I’m very excited to see how it comes together with the copilot series that you’re coming out with next. So I think that’s great. Speaking of copilot though, and especially in education, sometimes I feel like there is a bit of a schism in our community. And I feel like sometimes we have,

Kedasha Kerr (04:57)
Mmm.

Andrea Griffiths (04:58)
Mm-hmm.

Kedasha Kerr (05:05)
Yes.

Rachel Stephens (05:15)
kind of this people who are kind of true believers in the AI space and some of the people who are a bit more curmudgeonly in the AI space and the people who get kind of like the quote unquote, like you don’t really learn if you’re using AI, kind of you don’t have real retention, you don’t have real understanding if you’re just learning with the LLM. my own experience very much does not.

Andrea Griffiths (05:23)
Mm-hmm.

Kedasha Kerr (05:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Stephens (05:37)
play to that. I have learned great things. I’ve done things with LLMs that I would not otherwise have been able to do, which I think is great. But I think there is still a lot of people in this space who are worried that using the copilot experience somehow undermines quote unquote true learning. So what do you say to skeptics when people kind of come at you like that? Or do you not even see that?

Kedasha Kerr (05:52)
Hmm.

Andrea Griffiths (06:00)
I love, this question, Rachel. I love it. And we have talked a little bit about like the tools we wish you have. Like, Kedasha, I wish I had this series that you have now when I was trying to make sense of version control, right? I’m a career changer myself, also coming from a non-traditional background. And I’m also a little bit older. So I think it’s interesting for me to see how the evolution of the tools has come.

Kedasha Kerr (06:07)
Mm-hmm.

Me too.

Andrea Griffiths (06:24)
Working with developers every day, I see this debate happen. The conversation is very lively. I think it’s good to have a skepticism of these tools. That’s important, but it’s the same debate, right? You can take it back to like calculators and math. Like, did math teachers die when we started using calculators? No, they’re still extremely important, very relevant, especially to programming. We wouldn’t have LLMs if it wasn’t for math and, you know, all those advancements. So I think the key there is not so much to

Kedasha Kerr (06:37)
Yes.

Andrea Griffiths (06:54)
not be skeptic or not think that we should take an approach to AI with a mind of learning first, but how we use it, how we enhance our productivity, how we enhance our learning with those tools. Something maybe more recent than the abacus calculator analogy would be for security testing or testing in general, Everything used to be done manually, not long ago.

Rachel Stephens (07:17)
Mm-hmm.

Kedasha Kerr (07:18)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Griffiths (07:19)
If you were a tester, you lived on those testing frameworks. And whenever we started coming up with automated testing, people argue, developers are going to forget how to create tests. They’re going to forget how to perform appropriate and good testing methodologies. But what actually happened is we became better. Not only at testing, but at thinking strategically. At thinking in more high level about test coverage. So I see these tools as things that can help us free up our time so we can

Kedasha Kerr (07:28)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Griffiths (07:45)
focus on the complexity things, on the things that really require the engineering brain to be active. No one is writing, getting paid, least that I know, to write boilerplate code all day. Nobody’s writing anything from scratch. So I think I see Copilot and tools like that helping developers deepen their understanding. When you use them toughly, it’s a great way for you to level up, but it’s great to have a skepticism and still have home to fundamentals.

Kedasha Kerr (07:56)
Yeah.

Rachel Stephens (07:57)
day.

Andrea Griffiths (08:12)
Just how QA engineers didn’t become less capable, don’t think AI systems are going to diminish our understanding. It’s just going to shift us from memorizing syntax, which again, no one is writing boilerplate code anymore, to solving actual problems and focusing on those deeper, more specific issues that you need the engineer brain for.

Kedasha Kerr (08:33)
Yeah, I completely agree. I completely agree, Andrea. And like you touched on all the points I was going to say. like, I’m going to chime in here and I’m going to say like, I like to think of programming as an evolving field. And with each evolution, there comes a certain level of abstraction, right? So like, if we think about it, humans were literally computers doing calculations by hand. And then we got to the mechanical calculators that we got to, like, I guess, like electronic computers.

Rachel Stephens (08:33)
Absolutely.

Kedasha Kerr (08:58)
And with each level of abstraction that came, there were skeptics that was like, we’re going to lose our understanding of what a computer actually is and what it does. But I don’t think that actually happened. I think our brains were freed up to think about and solving more complex problems. Even when we move from the assembly language to more high-level programming languages like Python, some people were worried that programmers wouldn’t understand how computers work, but that’s not what happened, right?

we became more innovative and more creative and our mindsets were freed up to solve bigger problems. So I think like AI tools and especially like AI dev tools is just like another layer of abstraction and they’re not replacing our understanding, they’re letting us operate at a higher level of thinking and also have more time.

Andrea Griffiths (09:43)
For the fun things.

Rachel Stephens (09:44)
I love this.

Kedasha Kerr (09:45)
Yeah.

Rachel Stephens (09:46)
Love this. And I think as you’re talking about kind of abstractions and meeting developers at higher and different levels, I think we inherently start to get into this space where we’re talking about the use of natural language, which I think is a big part of what the copilot system allows you to do. And it definitely starts to lower that barrier to entry for other people who maybe don’t necessarily know a programming language before they begin the concept of

Kedasha Kerr (09:58)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Stephens (10:12)
starting to want to build things or starting to want to understand things. So I think we have lots of exciting places to go. And I know you’ve had colleagues who have come on the MonkCast before who’ve talked about wanting GitHub to expand to like a billion developers. so getting to a place where we can reach lots and lots of people is it’s going to come from meeting developers and people where they are. And so I love that.

Andrea Griffiths (10:25)
Yes.

Kedasha Kerr (10:26)
Yes.

Rachel Stephens (10:34)
Another area though that Andrea, when you were talking before about all of your work that you have done in terms of meeting people where they are in their own languages and ways that people can access and understand all of the things that you’re working on. I know you’re so passionate about all of these things. You are a maintainer of githubbrasil.com You do a lot of things to make things more accessible. Tell us just about all of these projects that you work on, what you’re passionate about, and how these communities are coming together for you.

Andrea Griffiths (10:43)
Hmm

I’m super fortunate I get to work here for one because I’m very proud of the work that GitHub has done in terms of language accessibility in the past couple of years. We really hone in to meeting developers where they are. Launching githubbrasil.com, that was a labor of love, but it came with the understanding that we needed to showcase that amazing open source communities, the contributions, the projects from Brazil. In a place like Brazil, 67 % of developers there prefer to…

enjoy content in their own language, prefer to contribute to projects in their own language. So language accessibility, I’m passionate about it. English is not my first language. And if I can help remove barriers for people to enter programming and stay in programming careers and have, you know, successful tenures as technologists, I’m there for that. For us as a company, we implemented a ton of features recently that really shows that that is a core part of who we are. Getting that to a billion developers.

ambition, I see it as, I know it sounds like a really big number because it is, and I am 100 % in the mindset that it’s not just a marketing fluff, but it’s a real commitment to making sure that we are the company where developers think of when they want to start, whether it be learning or skilling up or creating their projects, finding their startups, et cetera. So a lot of the work that GitHub has done driving different initiatives like incorporating machine learning, translation and discussions.

Rachel Stephens (11:59)
It does.

Andrea Griffiths (12:24)
There was a time when if you wanted to contribute to an open source project and you did not speak the language, like English wasn’t your native language, there was a lot of confusion, a lot of back and forth and a barrier to entry for people that are brilliant engineers in Sao Paulo, brilliant engineers in India, but maybe they don’t feel as confident speaking with a maintainer of a core project in English. So now we incorporated that into GitHub discussions so you can talk to maintainers. Maintainers can talk to contributors from different places, different regions.

different languages, all seamlessly, all within the platform, attract those new contributors, retain them, make their jobs easier as maintainers. So I think beyond open source and what the impact of having that accessibility when it comes to natural languages, as a company is a really smart decision too, honestly. Like there is an incredible market opportunity for all tech companies to reach customers where they are. So.

I’m very fortunate I get to work with Latin American communities and I see how important it is to provide those resources. And it’s only made us better faster. just looking at everything that we accomplished in terms of accessibility and gaining the feedback and the trust of those communities knowing that as a company we truly care to bring those global opportunities to them is incredible. So super proud of the work we’re doing there.

You know, it’s we can only do it because of the community, because you do come to our streams that are in different languages. You do contribute to platforms like githubbrasil.com So we’re happy to keep meeting developers where they are. And I hope there is a day where language is not going to be at least spoken language will never be a barrier to entry for people who want to learn something new.

Rachel Stephens (13:58)
I love this. And I love that you brought in open sources and opportunity because I really do think that’s such an important thing. And I think it ties back to what we were talking about at the very beginning with Kadasha in terms of trying to bring people in with really practical, tangible skills. Because I think one of the things that is really lovely about learning to program and kind of building the skill set on your own.

Kedasha Kerr (14:13)
Yeah.

Rachel Stephens (14:23)
And if you’re doing it in an open source community or in an open way, is that you can walk away with a really open skill set that people can see. yeah, I think the idea of GitHub as your resume, guess, a little bit.

Kedasha Kerr (14:35)
Absolutely.

Ooh, I like that.

I like that. I mean, I so I was on Reddit the other day and I think like I’m going to go back to the Redditor but I think like now more than ever in this age where AI is doing a lot of the coding for us and we’re reviewing, validating, make sure that it’s secure, etc. It’s important to have these foundational dev skills in our toolbox like Git and GitHub. So like I was on I was on Reddit the other day and I saw a developer.

maybe a new developer, maybe just a person who doesn’t code, but they built an application over the course of four months using, yeah, it was you that shared it. And I was so like, my gosh, using an AI assistant, right? Four months of work. And so they went into the AI assistant, they said, hey, can you make a change to da da da? But the AI assistant edited the entire code, I guess, and they lost all their work.

Andrea Griffiths (15:11)
I saw this. Yes. So painful. So painful.

Rachel Stephens (15:31)
no.

Kedasha Kerr (15:31)
they lost

all their work and they came to my end, they’re just like, oh my goodness, how can I not lose my work when working with these things? And that just showed me like, wow, people really need to know about version control, Git, GitHub, the flow and getting into the habit of making sure they’re committing their work, making sure they’re saving their work is essentially what a commit is as they go along. I think like.

Rachel Stephens (15:52)
Mm-hmm.

Kedasha Kerr (15:55)
Learning how to use Git and GitHub sets you up for a successful career as a developer, but also sets you up for a successful path as an entrepreneur. Like if you’re building with tool, AI tools, you still need to know how to use like foundational developer tools because it’s only going to save you a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of pain and tears. Cause I can’t imagine losing four months of work.

Andrea Griffiths (16:10)
Mm-hmm.

Rachel Stephens (16:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Andrea Griffiths (16:17)
and tears.

Rachel Stephens (16:20)
Sounds brutal. yeah, I like it’s like if it’s your own projects, your own learning pathways, or if it’s as Andrea talks about, is you wanting to learn how to get into the community and kind of grow your skill sets in an open source way. There’s all kinds of reasons why you would want to build these skill sets and it’s important to have the tools.

Kedasha Kerr (16:29)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Griffiths (16:36)
a hundred percent. So you have to have the foundation, right? But then there is a lot of things that even foundationally speaking, even if you go through a traditional school for computer science, you truly don’t learn how to work with a team, how to talk to engineers, how to work with the different roles in creating an application or, and these are things that typically you learn them when you, okay, you get your first job, you get an internship, you get an apprenticeship, or you can learn them in open source.

Kedasha Kerr (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Griffiths (17:03)
You can learn them in open. You can learn how to communicate. You can learn how to, and I’ve seen, if I’ve seen one, I’ve seen a hundred. A lot of people that actually admire the industry started, have gotten recruited because of their open source contributions, right? My own career started because of open source. So I firmly believe it’s a good place for people to take once they have that foundational understanding to do that practice of learning in public. And you’re going to make mistakes if you’re using.

Kedasha Kerr (17:04)
Yes.

Andrea Griffiths (17:29)
Git and GitHub. It’s not going to be as painful as losing four months of your work, but it’s really, can show that living resume, those commits, what Kedasha was talking about, how that becomes your show/ tell This is what I know I can do. This is how it’s impacted this open source project this way or the other. Not to say you’re not going to make mistakes, but for the most part, open source communities are super welcoming and they want to help people skill up and they want to help them have that footprint.

When it’s time to go get that job, do you already have proof that, hey, no matter what your background is, you know what you’re doing. So definitely encourage everyone to, I got to shill open source every chance I get because we need more people helping out and bring in maintainers and we need more people bringing their fresh ideas and perspectives and diversity and thought That’s what makes tech great. So go take a look at Open Source.

Kedasha Kerr (18:09)
You

Rachel Stephens (18:19)
Yes.

Absolutely. I would just like to second that the open source community needs more voices and it needs more people to come help carry some of the load of the maintainership for sure. All right, well, thank you all so much. I would love to close with just final thoughts, just especially your thoughts on various pathways into learning technologies. Maybe let’s just close with, I think there’s lots of different ways for people to come into this industry.

I, it sounds like all of us have kind of taken our own paths in. I think, I think sometimes it can feel daunting when you’re not necessarily coming in through a traditional CS program. And so I would just love to kind of close out with just maybe some words of wisdom. If you are a self-taught learner or if you are coming in and you’re building these skills on your own, what does it mean to build up this resiliency in the skill set

Andrea Griffiths (18:52)
Mm-hmm.

Kedasha Kerr (19:11)
Hmm.

Rachel Stephens (19:14)
using resources that you have assembled on your own?

Kedasha Kerr (19:18)
Yeah, I can jump in. I would say like find a community because yeah, learning this stuff is hard, especially if you’ve never seen it before, you’ve never tried it before, learning it on your own in a silo is even more difficult. And so find a community. There are so many online communities for you to join. One that’s popping in my head right now is freeCodeCamp

Andrea Griffiths (19:23)
Yes.

Kedasha Kerr (19:44)
has a really robust community and they have a lot of free educational material that you can take. And also there’s a community called I think virtualcoffee.io where they have meetings and meetups to talk about tech and tech things. And you can like, you know, find people that you can pair with and work with and learn with as you go through this thing. So I think like that’s like the top tip I’ll give you if you’re learning and transitioning into this career is to find a community.

Andrea Griffiths (20:09)
That is excellent advice. Find your people. I love that. I love that. think for me, can personally share from my own experience because I’ve done it both ways. And first of all, give yourself grace. No one is born with these skills. Everyone at one point or the other had to learn them. And technologies have all been at a pace that even if you’re just coming today, what’s relevant today might not be three years from now. So we’re all having to level up constantly give yourself grace there.

Kedasha Kerr (20:12)
Yeah.

Andrea Griffiths (20:37)
But also find something that you’re truly interested in. I’ve tried to force myself to learn programming languages and technologies just because, maybe this is the hot thing. Maybe this is the employable thing right now. Maybe this is where the industry is going. And unless I find a project that I’m sincerely have some level of investment in, it just becomes extremely hard. It becomes harder to learn like that. So give yourself grace in finding something that you’re truly interested in.

I guarantee you there is an open source project that is, I don’t care what it is, making bread, building birdhouses, whatever it is, there is an open source project and there is an application of technology and programming that you can apply to that hobby. So when you align your interests and your wants with that curiosity to learn, just, it’s, it’s chef’s kiss. It makes it so much more enjoyable. I’ve done it both ways friends. So trust me, it’s a lot easier when you do it because you truly care about what you’re you’re learning and you’re building.

Rachel Stephens (21:33)
I love this. Okay, so in conclusion, find your people, find your passion, and use version control so you don’t lose four months of your work. And if you need more of these resources, GitHub has some that you can come find. Ladies, if people want to find more of either your work or some of the work that you have done for GitHub, where should they go?

Andrea Griffiths (21:37)
Yes.

Kedasha Kerr (21:38)

You can find me, Kedasha online @itsthatlady.dev everywhere on social and you can also find me on GitHub’s social channels.

Andrea Griffiths (22:04)
Yes, you can find us both on Fridays hosting Open Source Friday. So please come join our Friday stream if you want to meet some maintainers and take a look at those cool projects that maybe that’s where you’re going to come in and start learning and contribute. Otherwise, I’m online mostly as @alacolombia like the country dev or AndreaGriffiths11 on GitHub. Send me a LinkedIn request, like my DMs are open. I know both of us are pretty accessible to folks or I’m like.

Kedasha Kerr (22:08)
Yes.

Andrea Griffiths (22:29)
saying, Kedasha. I feel like, yeah, we both are. And honestly, it’s such a privilege to be here and be able to sort of pay it forward. I know I had people answer DMs from me where I was like, what? I can’t believe you even read that and answered my question. So whenever we have an opportunity to help guide someone, it’s always a privilege. So definitely look us up. And come join our streams on Fridays, please. We have a lot of fun.

Kedasha Kerr (22:30)
No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know, yeah.

Rachel Stephens (22:54)
Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much for joining us on the MonkCast and we will see you next episode. Follow us and subscribe if you want to hear more.

Andrea Griffiths (23:01)
Yeah, subscribe. They’re gonna order a hundred more episodes of this. Sorry.

Kedasha Kerr (23:04)
Bye.